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Evolving Empire

EDIT1: Bugfix release 1, see bottom of this wall of text
EDIT2: Note, all the controls are in controls.txt

Evolving Empire
A civilization 2-like game for LD24, where you shape and expand from a primitive, nomadic tribe fending off against barbarians, to a wide-stretching empire with complete continental control.

Sadly, making a 4X in 2 days, especially given its my first time even attempting a 4X game, drastically reduced the potential of this game, but I'm still happy that I got as much done as I did. No naval units, basically nothing past the "ancient era", and even windows dialogue menus for selection (yes, I was THAT desperate for time).

I wanted to add so much more... so please note that this isn't really a "finished game" but rather what I managed in 2 days.

I spent 20 hours first day and 19 hours second day on this, and I'm wrecked. If there's a serious bug you notice please post asap and I'll try to fix but I can't guarantee I will be able to anymore.

Have controls.txt ready for reference, you'll probably need it - you definitely will if you have never played a civilization game.

Made in Game Maker 8.1
trivia: this game uses less than 25 colours.
=================
======EDIT1======
=================
I released bugfixed version 1(no gameplay changes except fixing broken content, no content added), and kept the original (since the patched version is after the deadline)

Also, I uploaded a timelapse of me making it, for anyone interested (or those who don't believe I made it all in the 48h period):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpyG4wB18Dg

Bugfix list (bugfix release 1):
-Fixed critical glitch with city going to -1 population from barbarian attacks, and causing errors with the power() function
-Fixed critical glitch with being able to right click and select "Move here" with nothing selected, which caused cause errors
-Fixed barbarian targeting - it was backwards, it was supposed to target civilian units before military ones
-Fixed horse archer - after researching it, it wasnt listed in the city build menu sometimes
-Fixed barbarian spawn rates (was glitched, always spawned, and too often)
-Fixed F3 ending the turn, and F1 now correctly cycles turns fast.
-Fixed barbarian healthbars appearing in fog of war
-Unit select fixed, sometimes not selecting units
-Barbarians fortify fixed- they stop moving when hp is less than max (so hp is restored)
-A battle now correctly cancels a "move to" action
-Cities now correctly make the last made unit, when done production
-Horsearcher tech now correctly requires warrior tech
-Years were incorrectly growing by 100 years/turn up until 3000AD, not 3000BC, which is fixed (purely trivial counter but still)

Known issues:
-S settles a city, but is also the alternate down key.
-When research finishes, the city doesn't update status to clarify that (but it does finish, it just says "building research" instead, indefinitely, which does nothing).

EDIT3: List of features I managed to do in 48h:
-Fully working (excluding the fixed glitches) 4X engine with unit movement (including a primitive move-to), health, battles.
-Primitive barbarian AI and spawning, which wander until near a unit or city, and head towards it - they (should) attack defenseless units first, cities second, and military units third.
-Cities: that can grow, produce units or technology, be depopulated or sacked by barbarians (won't disappear if it's the only city left)
-Cities work tiles: you can change how they prioritise them with the city focus setting (default, food focus, production, max food, max production)
-Fog of war/Unknown area fog fully working, with units making visible a radius of tiles around them
-Select next unmoved unit (a bit buggy but yeah) - when done, a new unmoved unit is selected and the screen is centered on them, or you can press tab to go to the next unit - better than clicking on them one by one for each move!
-Greater visiblity on "mountains" (that lame rock thing), worse in "forests" (that lame tree thing)
-Unit movement - each unit has a specific movement, and terrain affects it - mountains cost a lot of movement, rivers a lot too, roads are much faster
-Improving tiles - workers can be built, that can build farms, roads, quarries, mines, plant or remove forests or clear improvements
-Can create new cities with colonists.
-Very little but still *some* unit variety (A weak Conscript, a moderate Warrior, a moderate but fast Horse-archer, against your standard Barbarian)
-Units affected by terrain (stronger if on a mountain or river, weaker in desert or tundra if I remember my code correctly)
-Healthbars, but the bugfix release may have broken them altogether.
-Save/load (F2 to save, F3 to load, F5 quicksave, F6 quickload)
-Basic text UI, but it should suffice.

Ratings

Comments

I love that you were able to get so much accomplished in 48 hours. I can't imagine trying to make a game as complicated as this in that time. Unfortunately, the gameplay itself is quite boring and tedious as there doesn't appear to be a lot to do except move slowly across the map and it's time consuming to constantly select and move each unit. Still, I could see this evolving into a fun game if you keep at it.

This is a nice Civilation Clone. I love the Game "Civilization" and your idea of making 2d game of it. The Movement of the units is a little bit buggy and overall i've seen all technolgies and units in "Civilization". I expected here something new.

Holy Moley! You built a 4X game in 48 hours!! You realize that to beat this, you're going to have to do an MMORPG next time, right? Very very impressive. I love these games (Civ 2 was my second video game after Great Green Mouse Disaster ;) ) and I think you've captured what makes them such fun really well. Of course there are lots of features you could add (if you had another year or so to work on it) but getting a fully working 4X with cities, units, tech trees and combat going in 48 hours is truly staggering. When you recover conciousness after this monumental effort, give yourself a pat on the back from me!

Thanks for the positive feedback guys :D
Anyway I shall not be working on this entry much, for I'll instead be making a proper, interesting 4X game sometime.

I've been experimenting recently with terrain generation over the past 2 days and I believe I have gotten what I wanted, so I might make 1 more update to this soon with randomly generated maps (and any bugfixes) and leave it at that (obviously though, for rating it, the original release is what you're going to have to judge).

Wow, impressive stuff. I love turn-based games, this is much better than the one I made. Classic gameplay, minimal but effective graphics. Very ambitious, could do with a little more feedback when research has been completed but other than that great work.

I have a problem with the fog tiles - they have a one pixel border that allow me to se the terrain through them, but this is the only drawback I found in this game. As the guy who grow up on civilisation (civ 2 - my first game, I remember as it was yesterday...) I have no option but to give You 5 stars :D

CONSTRICT HORDE XD. Bashed 20 of em out and swamped my island. Did some building, got all of the techs.

A fantastic effort considering the time, I was blown away by how much you had done. The only thing that was not fantastic was the right click menus, but then what can you expect given all the time making the game? A*.

Civilization I was my first PC game, and it's still the best.
You have done amazing job, to make this in 48 hours. It's really nice game. I spend half and our to research all technologies and explore the map. It's pretty unusual to use mouse but anyway, in first civil you was able to control everything with keyboard, not all the computers had mouse at that time. ^^
Awesome.